


Horala

by Varaen



Series: Fills for LLA 2016 [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:51:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varaen/pseuds/Varaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight bedrooms stand empty in a large house between a little pottery and a little smithy at the outskirts of Tirion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Horala

**Author's Note:**

> For the 04.02. prompt: Estel Anim  
> Darie is supposed to mean 'waiting' in Quenya, please tell me if it's wrong.  
> *Edit: I consulted some other websites and found my old analogue elvish dictionary and ended up with Horala instead. Elvish is _weird_.

There is a little shop in the artisan quarter of Tirion, looking very much like many other little shops in that part of the city. A sign above the door advertises excellent pottery and sculptures in bold, sprawling tengwar. The wood is cracked and the letters have been repainted many times. Judging by the decay, the sign has been moved at least once, but for its apparent age, it is still in excellent condition. To the side of the door, a smaller sign lists the offered services from household wares and decorative pottery to repairs in both Quenya and Sindarin in precise, narrow letters. The adjacent house belongs to the shop, but it is much too large even for the get-togethers she hosts from time to time. Only then does the emptyness abate for a day, when her law-daughters and sometimes even some of her law-siblings visit for tea and exchange the latest gossip. She never asks any of her law-kin to stay, and they leave after dinner every time. In the evening, she returns to the only used bedroom of the nine in the house, not counting the guest rooms she established as well. Although she is no small woman, she looks tiny, alone in the large double-bed. She always sleeps in the same side of the bed, the same side she has slept in ever since she married.

  
Sometimes, her routine is broken. At the end of the First Age of the sun, when the host of the Valar returned victorious, she closed the shop and was not seen for a month. When she returned, there was a renewed air of determination around her. That was when she filled the eight unused bedrooms in the house with scrolls and instruments, hunting gear and smithing tools and all the odds and ends an inhabitant may have strewn around their room. At the end of the Second Age, when the survivors of the war against Sauron that had grown weary of Middle-Earth began arriving on the shores of Valinor, she closed the shop for two weeks, and when she returned, she added a smithy to the other side of the house, opposite to her own atelier and shop. At the end of the Third Age, when a world-weary half-elf stops by, she closes shop for the day and listenes avidly to the stories he has never told before. Together, they plant a tree in her backyard and he leaves with an invitation to her next tea-party.

  
Eight bedrooms stand empty in a large house between a little pottery and a little smithy at the outskirts of Tirion. At the large table in the dining room, the only permanent inhabitant eats alone. Still, day after day, Nerdanel hopes, and waits for her family to come home.


End file.
